


When The Lights Go On Again

by WeShallSee



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha Sam Wilson, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Hurt/Comfort, Let me rephrase that: mutual pining but Steve and Bucky start fucking in 1938, Look I didn't mean to plot an abo fic spanning like 90 years but here we are, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mutual Pining, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Bucky Barnes, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-22 11:16:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22748788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeShallSee/pseuds/WeShallSee
Summary: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck, right?The same logic goes for Steve; he's a beta, because there's nothing else he could possibly be. At least in the eyes of doctors and every last person that met the guy. Bucky seems to think differently, though Steve's sure how much weight to give to the opinion of a guy who's clearly biased, and clearly an actor extraordinaire to live with Steve when there are alphas tripping over themselves to win Bucky over.But when Steve's usual and undefinable springtime sickness hits him with more force than he thought possible, he ends up having to reconsider a view viewpoints. And maybe update a few opinions he has of himself while he's at it.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 115





	1. Stormy Weather

“Lucky duck. _I_ never got to skip math class to go get typed,” Bucky gripes on the walk home from school, arm slung genially over Steve’s shoulder despite his mock-bitter tone. “You missed out on Mr. Miller’s bumble bee voice.”

“What?” Steve asks, eyebrows drawn tight together.

“He drones,” Bucky says with a grin. He tries to grab for the cheap certificate crinkled in Steve’s tight fist, but Steve pulls it out of his reach and shoots him a reproachful look. It’s awful kind of Bucky to try and get the news out of the way, though; Steve knows he looks nervous, shoulders at sharp ninety-degree angles and knuckles gone white around the paper.

Bucky can probably scent his worry in the air, but Steve’s comforted by the fact that no one else they’re passing on the street likely can. Steve’s scent had always been weaker than a toothpick and puberty didn’t make it any stronger. Hell, the whole reason he had to go get typed instead of waiting for a natural presentation of his ranking was because even he himself couldn’t tell if it had happened yet or not. Fucking _embarrassing._ Especially when compared to Bucky. Handsomest omega in high school. Most gorgeous scent out there, even muffled under cheap suppressants.

Bucky snuck his hand towards the paper again and Steve shoves it in his pocket instead. “ _Quit it,_ I’ll tell you when we’re in private, okay? I’m not gonna talk rankings while we’re in the middle of the street. I’ve got manners, I’ll have you know.”

“C’mon, Steve, that’s hardly fair and you know it. Considering I had to walk around smelling like a heat nest when I first presented and all. Remember that?”

Steve remembers the oddity of not having Bucky in school with him to chuck pebbles at during lunch, and he remembers Bucky showing up a week later with a thousand wide-eyed questions to ask the other omegas including but not limited to how to get the heady scent of his first heat off of him, and he remembers Bucky hugging him tight from sheer joy of seeing his buddy again and the guilt Steve felt when being pressed right up against Bucky’s neck got his heart pounding so hard he had a dizzy episode from the strain of it.

Yeah. Steve remembers just fine.

He puts on a big show out of sighing and pulling Bucky by his shirt collar to one of their many corner spots tucked away between one building and another. “Will you stop breathing down my neck if I show you my official ranking, Barnes?”

Bucky grins wide as could be, and Steve wants to flick his nose, or maybe kiss one of his perfect dimples. Either-or. Both. “Nope,” Bucky says, tone light as air.

Steve digs the certificate out from his pocket and unfurls it anyway, holding it out for Bucky to see.

Steven Grant Rogers. Son of Sarah Rogers (confirmed omega) and Joseph Rogers (confirmed alpha, deceased.) Ranking: beta.

He wasn’t sure what reaction he’d been expecting. Maybe for Bucky to be just as nervous as he was, suddenly aware that their few clumsy kisses out on Bucky’s fire escape wouldn’t be all that socially acceptable to continue for even more reasons than the homosexual element of it, maybe for Bucky to be relieved that Steve wasn’t an omega like him so that at the very least people wouldn’t accuse them of trying to be in some even more impossible omega-omega relationship. Omegas and alphas belonged together, betas belonged together, and the sky was blue. They’d already been keeping their clumsy hand-holding to private settings—a seventeen-year-old who hadn’t even presented yet matched up with a boy like Bucky was nearly as much of a risk as a beta and an omega trying to make things work—but this felt like the death blow to whatever experimental little crush they’d been fostering.

What Bucky says instead, though, is a baffled, “You’re _sure_ they got it right?”

Steve blinks up at him, eyebrows furrowing again. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s not like I’ve had a heat or anything.”

“Jeez, I dunno. You just don’t smell like a beta, that’s all.” Bucky shrugs and scuffs his shoe along the sidewalk, quirking his mouth to the side in a familiar gesture, one that said clear as day, _don’t make me sound stupid._

Steve dutifully tries not to. Just folds the certificate a little more carefully than before and tucks it back in his pocket and asks a tentative, “What do I smell like, then?”

Bucky shrugs again, sloppily, more visibly self-conscious. It takes a hell of a lot to make James Buchanan Barnes insecure and Steve finds himself tucking an arm across the small of Bucky’s back to mirror the arm over his shoulders, like if he just held him for a second things would clear up.

“I dunno, Steve. Your scent’s just _you._ ”

He still looks like he’s being personally hunted down by embarrassment, so Steve takes pity on him rather than trying to prod him into explaining what the hell having a ‘scent like himself’ meant. “Hey, want to catch me up on math homework?” he asks, squeezing Bucky’s side a little. “I think Ma made that soda bread you like so much. We can have sandwiches.”

Bucky looks at him with twenty varieties of relief in his eyes, and Steve hangs onto that for dear life, trying to pretend like he can’t feel the weight of the certificate in his pocket. At least he can enjoy Bucky’s company until some alpha just as dashing as him comes along. At least there could be that.

#

Bucky has the bad habit of looking like an angel when he’s sleeping, which Steve figures ought to be against the law. Lots of things Bucky did ought to be banned from the Rogers-Barnes household, come to think of it, because _every time_ Steve thought he might be getting over his infatuation with Bucky, he managed to do something even more lovable.

Steve thought he was over it at age eighteen, when the mixture of grief and overwhelmed frustration between his ma dying and trying to keep the apartment made his head spin. And there was Bucky, coming over with soup and staying the night, and then the next, and then the next.

He’d figured he was over it a year later when Bucky started going out with this alpha woman almost twice his age and far more polite and charming and _rich_ than Steve ever could be. But Bucky ended it the second she asked him to move out of Steve’s place. And Bucky had rubbed every piece of Steve’s clothing just under his jaw line, scenting it, like the very concept of anyone thinking he and Steve weren’t a package deal made him antsy.

Hell, Steve had thought he was over it yesterday, until Bucky hummed some tune he’d heard while out dancing, until Bucky cut Steve’s hair in the bathtub and kissed the bridge of his nose when he was done, until this very morning when Bucky slept right through his god-awful alarm clock and just had to look like heaven incarnate the whole time.

Steve’s so fucking screwed. And Bucky would be too, if he didn’t get up to get ready for work in the next five minutes.

He squeezes Bucky’s shoulder gently, gingerly. “Hey, wake up, Barnes. You’re wasting daylight.”

“Wrong motivation, buddy, th’sun isn’t up yet,” Bucky slurs, nestling close to Steve instead of making any effort to swing his feet over the side of their rickety bed that would be too small for the both of them but for their utter closeness. It was hell to sleep in during the summertime, but in winter it was the only way Steve could hope to keep from shaking apart. His body doesn’t hold onto warmth like it should, so Bucky’s does it for him. And Steve holds onto Bucky in return.

Now, in an early spring that’s already threatening to tip over into the later months that have forever meant certain doom for Steve’s health, it’s simply comfortable to remain close before the coming storm of illness.

Steve shakes Bucky’s shoulder a little harder anyway.

“C’mon, Buck. I’ll make you some eggs. Early bird gets the worm.”

“Early omega gets the knot,” he says, grinning into his pillow. At least he had peeked his eyes open to see if Steve was looking at him all stern. Which—he had always been predictable, sue him—Steve was.

“You’re the only person who says that, you know.”

Bucky wasn’t wrong to say it, though; his heats were early, quick-footed things ever since he first presented. Steve’s terrified of that fact. He knows full well the shitty suppressants they can afford to get their hands on aren’t the strongest things, and he knows that Bucky often ‘forgets’ to buy more when food’s running low, or they’ve found a new doctor who might be able to help Steve’s lungs, or heart, or liver, or all else. Self-sacrificing is a shared middle name between the two of them, and the struggle has always been fierce between Bucky allowing himself to suffer through an either dangerous or painfully lonesome heat versus Steve nearing as close to constant and untreated exhaustion as he can stand.

“S’cause I’m the only smart person on earth. When your heat can’t be beat, you’ll get the meat.”

“Awful. Did you just make that one up?”

“Yep. I’m a poet. I’m Shakespeare. Make me get out of bed.”

Sometimes, Steve wonders if Bucky tries to pretend Steve’s an alpha. For years now, the guy’s been taking a shine to staring down other omegas that come near, as if they could possibly want Steve, as if he and Steve are mated. And pleading for Steve to scent his clothes as if Steve’s dulled-out nothing of a scent could possibly ward off any alpha worth their salt. And asking for Steve to urge him through necessary yet unpleasant tasks as if Steve had the questionably-ethical power of an alpha’s voice of commands to use.

But Bucky was already looking up at him with that forever-trusting expression of his, and he shuddered so sweetly when Steve leaned down and brushed his lips just over the shell of Bucky’s ear.

“Get up,” Steve’s says, like he means it, like he could play pretend too. Bucky’s eyelashes flutter, and his breath leaves him in one gratified sigh, and he does as he’s told.

Steve has never fucked Bucky. Doesn’t have the health for it, all in all, but he’s laid near Bucky during his heats and tentatively smoothed sweat-plastered hair away from Bucky’s forehead and mumbled reassurances to each one of Bucky’s pained pleads, so he knows _exactly_ what Bucky looks like when he’s two seconds post-orgasm, flushed and blissed out on that singular moment.

It was how Steve realized how much Bucky likes it when Steve tells him things. Or at the very least, how he learned Bucky was likely one hell of an actor and he was one hell of an absolute creep for thinking his best friend might get off a little on Steve acting like an alpha.

Steve stretches as Bucky happily gets dressed. He climbs out of bed to pull on one of the few precious sweaters they shared as Bucky meticulously combs his hair, humming like he’s all too glad to be up and moving. Steve ruffles his hair as he passes to start making breakfast, half because he’s an asshole like that and half because he knows it’ll give Bucky an excuse to redo his hairstyle to perfection and take some time to wake up a little more.

There’s a routine to it: Steve fries up whatever they’ve got in the fridge (yesterday it was nothing but beans, today it became beans _and_ eggs from the all-too-soon aging chickens one of their neighbors keeps) while Bucky downs his suppressants with a glass of water before making lunch for both himself and Steve. Bucky packs his into an old tin that used to hold sewing supplies, or cookies, or something equally luxurious and secures it with fraying twine. He carefully plops Steve’s onto a baking tray and sticks it in the ice box, because Bucky knew Steve far too well, and Bucky knew that once he gets started on his various sign painting jobs and meticulous sketches of the day that he’ll think it far too much trouble to do much more than pop lunch in the oven to heat up.

They eat in relative silence. The days are still lengthening from the near-constant gloom of winter; the sun won’t rise fully until Bucky’s been at work for at least half an hour and already has his blood moving, working hand in hand with alphas and betas and omegas alike on the factory floor as if he’s the future made into one man. Steve knows the job’s a stable one; tensions across the global stage are already on the rise, and though no one’s saying it, both he and Bucky know that any factory making munitions will likely and unfortunately stick around for a long while.

“You don’t have to get up with me in the mornings,” Bucky says, getting up from his decades-old chair, sleepiness still making his movements clumsy enough to make the worn wood squeak like it’s wounded. “No need to destroy your own sleep schedule as thoroughly as I do. When I’m up, I’m up.” Doubtful, given that Bucky could fall asleep right on the table if given half a chance.

Steve shrugs and stacks his empty plate over Bucky’s as he grabs both to wash them in the sink. He considers his answer as he grasps their second dishrag to start cleaning the table and the tiny counter of their kitchen, as he readies Bucky’s coat for him and tucks a scrap of a sketch in his pocket for him to find sometime during lunch.

Once, when Bucky had only just moved in officially rather than spending every goddamn night with Steve with a constant promise to get a place of his own someday soon, Bucky’s mother had pulled Steve aside after a birthday dinner, or a Saturday family gathering, or some other event that made Bucky look like happiness distilled. She was an omega just like Steve’s ma was; she had the short end of the stick when it came to both gender and ranking. Steve always listened to what she had to say with a ferocious type of respect.

That day, though, it was difficult to give her words the full weight he wanted to. Not when she was mournfully explaining, “You’re a good boy, Steve, but alpha’s _aren’t._ Please don’t let him get any more used to someone sharing the household work or cheering on his boxing matches or all else of the sweet things you do for him.” She had glanced at her husband and then back to Steve with the same somber look in her eyes. “When he finds an alpha and realizes he won’t get to keep that idealism of his—Oh, it’ll break his heart. Don’t do that do him, Steve.”

The thing was, it had hurt only because Steve thought the exact same way. It had hurt because Steve had known since he was a kid that Bucky was going to marry someone else, that when they played house and Bucky clumsily kissed his cheek like a househusband glad to see his alpha come home, it was _all_ just pretend. It had hurt because Steve knew he couldn’t quit being sweet to Bucky, and the resulting guilt had long since made a home in his chest.

“Steve?” Bucky asks, tone going worried around the edges. Never condescending, never pitying, just concerned. Steve first holds out his wrist for Bucky to scent so he’ll know there’s no hint of oncoming-within-minutes illness making him go quiet. Bucky once described the change between Steve’s normal scent and his ‘two hours out from being bedridden’ scent as someone moving all the furniture in their home five inches to the left. Strange, off-kilter. Steve can’t tell the difference.

He tries not to watch too intently as Bucky huffs at the thin skin of his wrist, pressing an indecent kiss there because James Buchanan Barnes was most certainly an indecent omega. It couldn’t mean anything—Steve knew his scent wasn’t nearly strong enough to genuinely warrant such a reaction, even if Bucky hadn’t seemed to get the memo—but it was nice to feel, at the very least. “I’m alright,” Steve says, praying that his voice wasn’t strained. “Just, y’know, a little off. It’s that time of year.”

Bucky startles at that, expression doubling in wholehearted concern. “It always sneaks up on me. Aw, Steve, I’m sorry. Late spring’s never a good time of year.”

“Well, sure it is. The weather’ll be fine, everything’s blooming already, it’s looking to be a fantastic May. It’s just that I’ll be sick like I always am.”

Bucky returns to Steve’s wrist, considering. He places another kiss at the base of Steve’s palm. “If it’s any help, I think you’ve got more than a week ‘til it hits. Nothing smells _wrong,_ just a little stronger, y’know? Immune response or something.”

“Gee, thanks, a grand five percent increase in my abysmal beta pheromones’ll really spice up the air,” he deadpans, gently pulling his wrist away and ushering Bucky to the front door. He helps him slide his jacket on like they’re dining in some fancy restaurant, like Bucky was made to be spoiled. Maybe he is. Maybe he would be treated to all the delicacies he could possibly want if he had just made friends with the alphas in school instead of Steve, maybe he could be sleeping restfully in a luxurious bed with springs that didn’t form impossible lumps in the mattress.

Instead, Bucky’s tucking his makeshift lunch box under his arm, and struggling to get on his too-small and too-thin gloves, and pulling a useless beta into a tight hug.

“Have a good day, Steve,” he murmurs against Steve’s bedhead. “If something changes, if you get sick earlier than you expected, ask Ms. Josie to come get me, okay? Promise me.”

“I promise. Cross my heart and all that.” He squeezes Bucky in return. He soon bullies a wool hat onto him despite his protests that it’d muss up his hair and that _it’s not_ that _cold, Steve, c’mon,_ and all too soon was waving him goodbye from the doorstep.

The apartment always feels too quiet when Bucky wasn’t within its thin walls. Steve could play music, he could listen to the upstairs neighbors argue over who was hogging whose blankets, and none of it could ever fill the comfortable space that Bucky filled every moment he was home.

Which is a good thing. Technically. For Steve’s work, at least.

Sometime between painting a bubbly “OPEN” sign for the grocer’s two blocks down and realizing having only one person bringing home the bacon didn’t exactly stretch out well between rent and Bucky’s suppressants and Steve’s menagerie of medicine, Steve had gotten a reputation as _the_ guy to go to for signs that looked more like art and less like utility alone. Pretty things had been rare commodity for a while now. Steve was happy to provide a little color and spark to shops in the area as long as the pay covered supplies plus a little extra to save for hard times. Well. Harder times.

He only comprehends the day has drifted into early afternoon when he notices that enough sun was pouring in their few windows to warrant clicking off the lights, that he’d finished two thirds of his work already with paint to spare, and that his stomach was trying to start a revolution in search of food.

Bucky’s probably eating lunch right around now, too. The idea of him stuffing his hands in his coat pockets to try and ward off the cold as he wanders outside to eat and finding Steve’s sketch of the tiny flower cart Bucky always eyed longingly on their walks around the neighborhood is a good one. It spurs Steve to nab his newest sketchbook as returns to the kitchen, trying to not get too much paint on the open pages.

All the filled-up sketchbooks are in great towering stacks by Steve’s desk, saved for reference and kindling. Bucky always used to throw a plaintive fuss when they used the paper—covered in hours of reference sketches, light studies, countless scenes of Brooklyn and of Bucky’s grinning face—to light fires, but had quieted down around the time he realized he could pocket everything he thought was far too good to burn. Steve pretended not to notice. If Bucky thought his scribbled-out and half-trashed doodles were nice enough to keep, far be it from Steve to deny him.

Lunch’s good. Drawing while he ate, idly tracing out the edges of buildings he could see out the kitchen window, is just as nice, at least until he realizes he’d slipped into drawing Bucky from memory again. Bucky hiding his face in his arms, napping, sprawled out on the ratty living room rug. Bucky with the corners of his mouth sharply turned down, practically radiating a message of _quit getting yourself hurt, fuck’s sake, Steve._ Bucky with his pupils blown out and lips gone rosy from heat, sprawled out on their bed, restless.

Steve’s heart does something funny against his ribs—Bucky would ask, “Funny-funny or dying-funny?” if he were here—and Steve’s fork drops from his hand of its own accord. It clatters on the tile floor, which Steve would need to clean, but first he has to focus on not tipping right out of his chair and cracking his head on that same hard tile.

This happened, sometimes, when he was close to his usual spring sickness. Something would go _odd_ and his body wouldn’t know how to handle any rush of energy, couldn’t keep his heartbeat consistent enough to maintain much steadiness.

Steve clumsily lays his head on the table and sets his hands over the back of his neck like support beams, and breathes, and breathes. Bucky’s scent is all but dissipated by now, but he can smell the clean wood of the table, and the warm scent of his cooling meal. He doesn’t faint, which is a start. He doesn’t get nauseous from the dizziness, which is an even better sign. Both means he won’t have to either break his promise or bother Bucky at work, because technically Steve is doing hunky-dory, which meant Bucky’d get another paycheck before demanding to stay home with Steve out of fear of him kicking the bucket while he was out one day. Steve thinks it’s a stupid fear. He’d sooner brawl with the grim reaper then let anything take him away before Bucky could have a chance at a genuine goodbye and some closure.

Steve swallows back a groan at the tension held in his body, at the firing of each muscle as it rebels against—Something. The coming illness, or the inconsistency of the blood flowing through his veins, or the gradual fading of Bucky’s scent from the apartment. Oh. That’d fix this. That’d center Steve like nothing else, if he could just find something of Bucky’s, he’d feel alright again.

This was a habit of the springtime sickness too; Steve always gathered comfort objects. Maybe that was why it scared Bucky so bad, because he likely looked like he was making a deathbed, every blanket and item of clothing in the house piled up around the bed in great heaps that Steve sprawled out and often failed to sleep on. He set Bucky’s suppressants out near the growing piles too, like a dare, like _I’ll know if you quit taking these, martyr._

The piles never looked like the nests Bucky made on the rare occasions he took suppressants sporadically enough that his heat started stalking him. Those were comfortable, designed to cushion every part of him to try and provide some sense of solace while he ached for any kind of aid. These heaps Steve made felt a hell of a lot more like trying to keep everything he cared about in one space, where he could watch over it all.

He didn’t realize how much time he’d poured into assembling everything until he hears the lock click and Bucky shuffle in the door. Shit. He’s losing time like an hourglass today.

“I’m okay!” he calls out first, face still buried in a knitted blanket that he can’t decide on adding at the head or the foot of the bed. “I know it looks like I went and vanished in two seconds flat out there but I’m alright, promise.”

Bucky still looks outright stricken when he peeks in the bedroom, though, face gone slack with concern. Steve can’t blame him for that. None of the doctors they’d visited had a decent explanation for the sheer oddity surrounding the spring illness; one said allergies, one said a weak immune system’s time running short, one asked Bucky how he was managing without a good, strong alpha in the home instead of diagnosing Steve and Bucky had smiled proudly as Steve socked the doctor in the jaw instead of paying. Springtime was a mystery, made all the worse by the fact that no medicine in the market seemed to help.

“Did it come already?” Bucky asks, like Steve would be upright and walking if it had.

Steve chucks the blanket up by the small collection of pillows he’d assembled. “Nope. But you were right, it’s real close. I’ll clean up the kitchen, alright? Take off your coat, Buck, let yourself rest a little.”

The apples of Bucky’s cheeks go pink and Steve wonders for half a second if that offhand request had sounded too much like the mockery of alpha’s commands Bucky liked before realizing his sketchbook had been left open and askew on the kitchen table. With Bucky’s lustful eyes and luxurious pose plastered over the majority of the page. Steve at least has the decency to flush too, to rub his thumb over his temple to hide away just a fraction.

“Sorry, that was, uh, inappropriate,” he says, at the very moment Bucky blurts out,

“Hey, the flower cart picture was grand, but I’d like to keep that pinup of me more’n anything else.”

Steve blinks.

“Please?” Bucky tacks on, as if Steve would ever deny him.

“Yeah, yeah, you know you can tear out any of my sketches you like. Go ahead. I’m still gonna clean the kitchen.”

Bucky shakes his head with an easy grin, pulling Steve into an embrace that was less simple hug and more an attempt to not-so-subtly make sure Steve was breathing alright, to get their scents on each other again, to reassure himself that things were still okay in this moment.

“Hey. Help me get my shirt off.”

“What?” Steve sputters, even as he eases Bucky’s coat off his shoulders. Bucky took over in unbuttoning his soft shirt, slipping it down alongside his coat.

Bucky grins like he could open letters with his smile. “So I can mop the kitchen without getting water up my sleeves. I’ve gotta pay you back for such pretty pictures, after all. Rest up, okay?”

“You’re a fucking conman,” Steve accuses, but he’s already fussing with how to arrange the new items of clothing along the bed, so he knows Bucky’s aware that he’s won. Steves’s happy for the additions to the piles and he’s downright pissed for being tricked out of cleaning his own mess.

“And you’re difficult. I’ll get your ma’s photo album to bring in here while I’m at it.”

“Jerk.”

“Punk.” Bucky squeezed his hand, far too gentle. “You’re gonna be okay, right?”

Steve swallowed. “Yeah. I’m gonna be okay, Bucky. I think it won’t be too bad this time around.” Maybe Bucky was a great actor, sure, but Steve had always been a god-awful bluffer.


	2. There’s Something in the Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's been sick for far too long. Bucky's got the threat of a soon-to-arrive heat hanging over his head. Everyone gets a nice, cool washcloth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, all the titles will be 30s and 40s songs that suit the chapter, yes, I know it's cheesy lmao
> 
> Slight tw for Bucky being in a situation that could've turned into very, very dubious consent.

Bucky would be happy about his correct guess of Steve’s springtime illness giving them a week to prepare, if not for the inevitable crash of worry over his head the second the sickness actually hit. While Bucky was out selfishly dancing, even. With no dutiful neighbor informed to come and get him. He doesn’t realize Steve is bedridden until he steps through the front door and unwraps his scarf meant to shield him from the May rut-season breeze, only to be smacked sideways by sheer guilt and Steve’s scent.

Both always heighten when Steve’s sick, but never quite as much as in spring.

Sometime when Bucky was thirteen, limbs gangly and still childishly sure he’d marry Steve Rogers one day, he’d gotten so frustrated with the other kids who swore up and down they couldn’t tell if Steve even _had_ a scent that he cussed them all out right on his front doorstep and got his mouth washed out with soap for his trouble.

Steve had looked awful guilty about it, toeing his shoes together and trying to insist it was him who’d called Harry and Jane and Josie from school ‘lying bastards with no real nose to call their own,’ but Bucky’s ma didn’t let him take credit for it. There were all sorts of names that stuck to Steve just for being sick more often then not, and not having a hearty scent even when he was a pup, and not being all that good at running games. Steve wasn’t the type to try to hurt someone with words. Likely to kick them, sure, but Bucky liked that about him too.

Bucky liked a lot of things about Steve, up to and including his oft-debated scent. Like frost on a morning cold enough to see breath hanging in the air. Like morning dew on a spider’s web, like springtime.

Stepping into their home that night was like being draped in all those silvery, slight things. Bucky moved like he was afraid of breaking the scent as he managed to peek through the bedroom door.

Sure enough, Steve was stretched out on the bed and stripped down to his boxers, chest flushed a blotchy pink like he’d gotten a fever. He had Bucky’s lone wool sweater pressed up against his face like one of those fancy oxygen therapy masks Bucky wished for every time Steve had one of his asthma attacked.

Bucky didn’t have to so much as speak before Steve’s gaze was flicking up to him, his pale blue eyes gone glassy and nearly all pupil, his breath catching like cotton over sandpaper.

“Hope I didn’t wake you up coming in the front door,” Bucky says, looking the very picture of tucking his metaphorical tail between his legs, but Steve sets his jaw and shakes his head into the plush of Bucky’s sweater.

When he speaks, his voice is muffled by it. “I couldn’t sleep, s’alright. C’mere.” Steve swallows. His voice is raspy, like his mouth is dry, like when puberty first hit him fully and Bucky spent hours requesting Steve to say things in his newfound voice and half-ignoring the cracks in it. “Please,” Steve adds, quieter, and Bucky just about falls over himself to get to the bed.

The piles around it have grown as much as is possible with their meager belongings—there’s even the can of peaches they’re determined to save for wintertime but will no doubt scarf down in summer with sticking juice running down their wrists—so navigating his way to the mattress is difficult, considering he’s trying to toe his shoes off and strip off his slacks and overshirt at the same time. He trips over his own clothes and nearly falls right on top of Steve, who tangles a hand in his hair and guides him to where he needs to be. Curled up beside Steve, every part of him shielded from their lumpy mattress by carefully placed pillows and folded up clothes, with Steve forgoing the sweater to instead scent over Bucky’s neck.

Moments like these always get Bucky feeling some type of way. Cared for, and free to utterly relax, and guilty as hell. Steve doesn’t have pillows under him. Steve’s sick. And yet, Steve’s the one making these low, pleased noises against his skin that he _has_ to know Bucky likes far too much, Steve’s the one getting a hand around the back of Bucky’s thigh and guiding him close. It would be so easy to tip his head to give Steve more room to press his lips against Bucky’s throat or scrape his teeth over the thin skin there, and, _fuck,_ Bucky feels like his head is swimming in the brightness of spring morning scent despite the heavy city night just outside their window.

“Steve,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds off-kilter even to himself. Steve hums against him in return, hand sliding over Bucky’s bare thigh, and Bucky forced himself to clear his throat. “You’re burning up, tough guy. I’m gonna… I’ll get you a washcloth.”

It almost physically hurts to untangle himself from Steve. The wounded sound Steve makes as Bucky manages to stand up only adds to that sensation of injury, but Bucky makes himself step out of the room, and fetch a washcloth to rinse in cool, cleansing water, and braces his arms against the sick to clench his eyes closed and attempt to iron out his breathing into something less affected. His best friend is _sick._ His best friend is trying to be close, nothing more, and here Bucky is, feeling like he’s going to trip and fall into heat with or without suppressants. Rut season must be getting to him. His scarf must not be nearly as thick as it should be.

He gets an extra glass of water for Steve before stepping back into the room, washcloth still in hand, and Steve looks so far gone with fever that it feels like a miracle he’s able to track Bucky’s approach with his eyes. He still looked pained, body gone so tense that it had started to shake with the effort. And Bucky still wants Steve’s teeth against his neck. He feels like the most disgusting piece of muck in or out of the nearby river.

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles out, and Jesus, the guy _must_ have one hell of a fever if he thinks he’s got anything to be sorry about.

“Stop it. You getting sick every once in a while isn’t some type of burden, you got that?” Bucky helps his guy sit up and carefully starts pressing the cool washcloth to his temples and his bare chest and tries not to think too hard. Needless to say, he can’t understand why Steve looks so frustrated.

“What? Christ, Buck, that’s _not_ what I’m—" He groans again, his hips shifting restlessly and head lolling like he’s too dizzy to keep it on straight, and Bucky fumbles to help him lie back down. No wonder he was keeping himself flat on his back when Bucky came home. Steve is hurting, and Bucky still wants to get off on his scent. It’s too fucking pathetic of Bucky for words.

It’s quiet then, for a while. Or at least it’s the approximation of what quiet is like when Steve’s sick, full of labored breathing and low groans and the mouse-quiet rasp of the washcloth Bucky’s still hoping will keep Steve at least a little cooler. Instead, the cloth is warming in his hands. He knows looking distressed about it won’t help, and he knows he looks distressed nonetheless, and he knows Steve is watching him with those forever-sharp eyes of his and a furrow in his brow.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Bucky says, because he needs it to be true and because it sounds like something someone not-fretting would say.

“Sure I am, Buck,” Steve says. He’s nice like that. He even smiles a little for good measure. He drinks the glass of water, and he eats the food Bucky brings him, and he lets Bucky tuck himself against his rattling chest when sleep becomes a necessity.

Even with Steve deep in his springtime illness with no sign of it ending anytime soon, Bucky feels cared for. It’s absurd. It’s astoundingly sweet, and Bucky falls asleep so comfortably that it hurts.

#

Steve has been sick for two weeks. His hair’s stuck to his forehead with sweat again, even though he forced himself to shiver through a chilled bath just this morning, and Bucky feels personally guilty about it. Like if he was just trying harder to find a better doctor, ones who didn’t start yammering on about unattended heats being difficult on sickly omegas before declared the case a mystery the second Steve informed them he was a beta, then Steve wouldn’t have to go through this.

But Steve’s glaring at him through his fever-glassy eyes like he should be guilty about something else entirely.

Bucky pretends not to notice. He knows exactly what Steve’s going to say before he scowls harder and emphasizes, “I _know_ you stopped taking your suppressants.”

Bucky shrugs and sips his far-too-bitter coffee. “I ran out.”

“So go to the store and buy more. There’re still three dollars in our savings. And twenty-five cents.”

“Maybe next week,” he says mildly, because one bottle of suppressant pills costs two fucking dollars these days and that’ll be doom itself if Steve needs to go to the doctor, or if his sickness worsens, or if groceries are a few cents pricier than they anticipated. Bucky plans to stay off suppressants until Steve is well again, no matter how long that’ll take. Heat be damned.

Steve is glowering down at his oatmeal now, but he doesn’t say a word. Bucky isn’t sorry. He’d much rather withstand the discomfort of fucking a stranger of an alpha or suffer out his heat alone than see Steve in any more ill-health than he already is.

#

Steve has been sick for thirty fucking days and Bucky’s giving off such a strong scent of distressed omega about it that the other guys working on the factory floor with him keep asking if he needs to head home early. He always viciously shakes his head against the very idea of that.

It’s June by now, and the temperatures are slowly on the climb, but Bucky knows full well the hot flashes that keep stifling him aren’t from the weather. He’d always had a quick cycle. Christ, Steve is going to be _pissed_ when the unavoidable heat crashes over Bucky.

Still, he keeps his scarf wrapped tight around his neck as he works, as he requests overtime, as the summer sun hides away behind Brooklyn. Steve would likely be pissed about this too; finishing up work as late as possible for the slight extra pay and walking home in the dark smelling like pre-heat brothel isn’t exactly what Steve would deem reasonable. But then again, Bucky doesn’t deem the bite-and-kick fights Steve gets himself into as reasonable. They both get to have their moments of hypocrisy.

He’s got this stupid idea that maybe the scarf blocks his scent, just a little. But just as it was far too thin during the start of rut season, it’s far too thin now, and before he’s walked more than a few blocks he realizes there’s someone trailing after him. An alpha. After spending so long with Steve, it almost feels strange to know someone’s ranking while they’re still ten feet away, like something distinctly impersonal. Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets and walks faster.

Which, _of course,_ spurs the guy to call out, “Hey, where’re you going? Handsome omega like you, out this late?”

“Hey, why don’t you buzz off?” he says over his shoulder.

The thing was, an alpha chasing after an omega was a real common occurrence, whether or not said omega was reciprocating any advances. The thing was, alphas were only prohibited to use their voice if they’d be forcing someone into direct harm, which could be defined as strictly or as leniently as any given jury wanted it to be. The thing was, this close to heat, this mock-chase was a game of distance; if this alpha got too close then Bucky wouldn’t _want_ to go home to Steve’s safe embrace anymore, he’d want a knot to quell his heat at the source. Bucky knew that, and he knew the alpha lazily tracing his path understood it all just as fully.

“Aw, don’t be like that, sugar. C’mon. Can’t expect an upstanding citizen to stand idly by while a looker like you’s all distressed. How far out from heat are you?”

“Fuck off.”

“I’d say twenty-four hours, tops. _God,_ you’re a beauty.”

The alpha is far too close. Bucky had bunched his scarf up against his nose but it felt useless, because he was slowing to a stop to lean against the concrete side of some behemoth of a building, because his head felt lined with cotton, because it was starting to seem so much _easier_ to let this alpha rut into him for a while than to try and get home.

He feels like guilt incarnate when the man’s hand landed against the back of his neck, tugging the scarf away to get his face between Bucky’s neck and his shoulder. The pit of his stomach felt like the cough syrup Bucky had to take when he had colds as a kid, horrifically slick and sickly saccharine.

“There you go,” the alpha coaxes, as Bucky stops trying to hang onto his scarf so tight. “Fuck, I love easy omegas like you. No one at home to take care of you, huh?”

And something in Bucky’s chest rebelled. _No one to take care of him?_ Bucky hadn’t felt lonely a goddamn day in his life without Steve Rogers always, miraculously, showing up out of the blue to put on the radio for him and figuratively sweeping him off of his feet into some clumsy, toe-stepping slow dance. Who makes him soup whenever he’s too burnt out to stand at their clunky stove for longer than a minute. Who, when he limps home after a quelled heat after _some fucking alpha_ just like the one huffing against his neck baits him into lying still, bundles him into bed and takes care of him.

Bucky doesn’t want to be fucked in some grimy, unfamiliar bed, he wants Steve’s scent wrapped around him like silk, he wants Steve’s charcoal-smudged hands to smooth over his hips.

He digs his bitten-ragged nails into the hand trying to get at his belt buckle and hisses, “I’ve got a mean right hook with your name on it, buddy. Let go.”

It isn’t so much that the guy lets go willingly as that Bucky tears himself away with a hand clapped over his mouth and nose to keep himself from breathing until he’s far, far away from this place. It’s a lucky thing that he knows the streets leading back home like the back of his hand, and even luckier that the alpha barely managed a shocked, “ _Hey!”_ in response. Bucky’s never heard of an omega near heat able to get away from an alpha, unless they’re mated to someone else, so he’s not surprised the guy’s too stunned to use his voice or chase after when two seconds ago he was huffing into unmarked, unbonded skin.

Maybe Bucky is mated in some odd, misshapen way. Maybe his heart is too lovestruck to know the difference.

#

Bucky barely gets in the front door before Steve starts struggling in the bedroom, pained groans low and weak with strain. Fuck. Bucky should’ve stopped by a friend’s place, tried to scrub the aura of distress and cold fear and rage off of him before coming home, because he’s far too tired to come up with a pretty excuse now. He slowly pulls his scarf off, unlaces his boots, and tries to not feel too guilty when Steve unsteadily totters out of the bedroom with a fevered flush over his shoulders and a world’s worth of upset in his eyes.

“Bad day at work?” he jokes flatly, kindly, and Bucky’s never been more grateful to hear that specific deadpan in his life. It earns half of a laugh from him as he toes his boots off and scrubs a hand over his neck, horrifically aware that he smells like someone else.

“Sure. Bad day.”

Steve is quiet as Bucky unbuttons his overshirt down to the waist and grabs a clean dishrag to wipe over himself with at the kitchen sink. A bath would work better to get the stench of fear and a stranger off of him, but it’d take far too long to heat all the water to the near-boiling temperature Bucky’s skin craves, and he needs some form of relief now. His heat is still threatening to collapse over him, too; cool water feels like hell but it’ll at least it off for a while longer.

Steve is quiet as he nears, one forever-gentle hand touching over the back of Bucky’s, tentative as could be. “I can do that,” he says, and really, it’s a question. One that Bucky’s all too relieved to nod into, to hand the cloth off to Steve and let himself be guided into one of their kitchen chairs that he can slump in and focus solely on touch that he’s grateful for.

_No one to take care of him at home._ Christ, what an impossibility.

It’s not a surprise to him that when Steve tips Bucky’s chin up and leans down enough to kiss over his neck and share some of his own dew-and-morning-breeze scent, even though that exact touch had felt like a self-contained betrayal only twenty minutes before, every last fiber of Bucky’s being breathes a sigh of relief. His eyes close easily. But it is a surprise that Steve’s fevered shaking eases, too, calmed to something marginally more steady.

Oh, god, he’s been sick for so long that Bucky had nearly forgotten, if only in this suspended moment. Bucky’s stomach twists itself into a knot too complex to name. “I’m taking rotten care of you,” he blurts out, and he can _feel_ Steve tense. He fumbled to defend his point: “It’s past midnight, you should be resting, you’re _hurting,_ Steve. C’mon, you can’t argue with me about this. You should be asleep. I’m fine.”

Steve sets the dish cloth aside and brushes his thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone until he opens his eyes. Steve looks pissed. Not at Bucky, though, not in the way Bucky’s furious with himself, but it’s undeniable that Steve’s mad down to the heart of him. “Buck, listen to me. You’re the stupidest guy I’ve ever met.”

Bucky blinks, too caught up in Steve’s overly gentle touch to process his low, furious words for half a moment. “What?”

“You heard me. You’re stupid. And self-centered, but in all the wrong ways. How come you think everything’s on your shoulders, huh? How come you think you can say you’re fine like that makes it true?”

Bucky bristles, sitting his jaw. “Look who’s talking. You’re a bona fide Atlas, Steve, and you know it.” Steve snorts, but Bucky presses on. “I’m being _serious._ You push yourself too damn much.”

He knows his teeth are gritted, but he’s still unrightfully dismayed when he can hear Steve’s own hard-set jaw in his tone.

“I’ve been tucked away in bed for thirty days, Buck.” Steve’s touch doesn’t match his tone and it’s making Bucky feel dizzy. But maybe that’s just the adrenaline crash from making it home safe and sound. “I think ‘pushing myself too much’ isn’t something that’s possible right now. Thirty days, and you’ve been heaping responsibility onto yourself with every passing day. I haven’t been doing _shit._ Tip your head back.”

Bucky does so with a frustrated huff, even if Steve carefully rubbing his rail-thin wrists under Bucky’s jaw feels like relief incarnate. It doesn’t stop him from arguing, though. “You’re not feeling well, Steve, and you haven’t been for a whole month. And you still do all of this. Taking care of me. Getting up in the dead of night, like a goddamn ghost, for _stupid_ reasons. Pulling yourself out of bed just ‘cause—"

Steve interrupts him with a genuine growl, a sound that rattles in his chest and between his ribs but makes Bucky bare his neck a little more nonetheless. His heart’s going a heavy, low mile a minute, but it tears itself in two the moment he picks up on Steve’s frustrated, wounded tone as he says, “Because you were scared half to death by _something_ on the way home, and I wasn’t there to—" His breath catches in his throat; Bucky can hear it clear as day. “I want you safe and happy so badly that it hurts, Buck.”

And suddenly Bucky’s blinking far too fast, his eyes prickling like someone’s pinched the bridge of his nose too hard. He squeezes them shut, instead.

Steve’s hand slides to the back of Bucky’s head, cradling him, thumbing over the cropped-short strands. “But I know we don’t have the funds to buy you more suppressants, and I know your heat’s close, and I _know_ you’re gonna feel obligated to limp to some sleazy rut-ridden bar to pick up an alpha that makes you smell like terror and guilt by the time you come home. I fuckin’ hate that I can’t keep you safe from that.”

Bucky’s had conversations with his folks about this before. His sisters old enough to present are all alphas, spitting image of their pop, but Bucky’s always been a momma’s boy, through and through. It made sense he’d be the only omega kid they had, but Bucky’s father never had known what to do about it, had worried himself sick about how he could possibly keep his son safe when the post-Great War eugenicist fucks held ‘fertile omega’ contests at state fairs, right between the corn and the ‘best baby’ pageants.

Bucky had been busy worrying if said eugenicist fucks were going to do something unspeakable to Steve, but his classification as a beta saved him from the most scrutinizing medical trials of worth. The fact that Bucky himself was expected to pump out at least two litters of pups before age twenty-five had snuck up on him.

“I stocked up on birth control before the spring,” Bucky says, and what he means is ‘stop worrying; I knew what I was getting into’ and what he means is ‘I knew we wouldn’t have cash for suppressants no matter how much overtime I cashed in on’ and what he _wants_ to mean is ‘I wish you could keep me safe, too.’

He isn’t angry, anymore. Just tired as a brass band after a Friday night.

When Bucky opens his eyes again, Steve doesn’t look angry anymore, either. It’s worse; he looks like he’s trying to not let entire oceans spill from his eyes, he looks unsteady on his feet and hurt down to the marrow of him.

The gift of the evening, though, despite the woolen-scratch of heat threatening just under Bucky’s skin, is that he knows exactly what to say.

He brushes his lips over the palm of Steve’s fevered hand and murmurs against the skin, “I’m not going out again tonight. I’ll tell the boss that my heat hit, he’s nice enough about that kind of stuff. Gonna stay right here with you, tough guy.”

Steve swallowed, breath knocking against his ribs again. “You sure spending a heat without an alpha won’t hurt too bad?”

Oh, it’ll hurt. Bucky doubts he’ll be able to do much more than keep some cheap knotted aid inside him and bury his sobs for an alpha under pillows by the third day, and the thought of not being upright and able to just plain make Steve a nice breakfast from time to time isn’t one Bucky’s keen on, but if Steve’s willing to withstand the scent of him then Bucky’s more than happy to whether the storm in a place he feels genuinely comfortable in.

Instead, Bucky says, “It won’t be too bad, cross my heart. You know me, Stevie. Ever the dramatic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is simply like, "Wish that Steve loved me. :( Yes, he kisses me, yes, he wants to spend my heat with me, yes, he's concerned about me, This Is Platonic Best Friend Behavior." And honestly? King of unnecessary pining.
> 
> And yes, 'best baby' contests were a Thing in America during 1910s-20s, and yes, they were as creepy and eugenics-filled as you might expect. The more you know!
> 
> The next chapter'll likely up the rating to explicit, just so y'all know, lmao

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are always much appreciated! I don't have a beta reader, so if a typo is bugging you, I'll be forever in your debt if you point it out.


End file.
